As I nurse a bad cold here at home, I just finished watching an episode of the Rifleman, starring big, bag Chuck Connors as peace-loving, rifle-toting, outlaw slicing-and-dicing Lucas McCain.
A quick check over at TV Acres reveals that the show was supposed to take place in 1860s New Mexico. Huh. I had guessed Nebraska.
Anyway, how feasible is his rifle? TV Acres says it is “an 1892 .44-40 Winchester carbine specially modified with a large loop and metal tab to turn his rifle into a rapid firing machine.” The link continues, “Lucan McCain reportedly could squeeze off a round of ammunition every three-tenths of a second and fire eight times in two-and-a-half seconds.”
Wouldn’t squeezing off eight rounds of .44 caliber-sized bullets in 2.5 seconds result in terrible accuracy? How might the accuracy compare to firing off a similar number of rounds from a much-faster M-14 or AK-47?
[Mods: I’m hoping for a factual answer. GQ seems more likely to get them, than Cafe Society.]
There’s your answer. The rifle is feasible…it exists. Accuracy is going to suffer vs a semi-auto weapon if for no other reason than you don’t have to take the AK from your shoulder. Just pull the trigger and squeeze out a series of 3 rounds bursts. I have proven to be very accurate with such a weapon, and I’m not that good.
So in short, no, squeezing off eight rounds in 2.5 seconds wouldn’t necessarily result in terrible accuracy with his modified design. It would require a skilled shoorter and the acuracy may not be 100%. But it wouldn’t need to result in terrible accuracy.
That depends entriely on the shooter and the circumstances.
The thing to realise is that assault rifles on full auto are more likley to bring down migrating geese than to hit a target on the ground. That’s why most weapons have a three round burst feature. The idea being that even though the second two rounds go astray they are still close enough to where you aimed that if the first round missed they could still hit. Simply firing an 8 round burst would almost certainly result in <10% accuracy at any sort of distance.
To achieve sharpshooter accuracy with an assault rifle you need to select semi-auto, IOW single shots. In theory that will still be a more accurate way of firing than McCain’s contraption because, as silenus points out, you never need to remove the sites from the target to reload. However as Snoxall proves the user plays major role in this as well.
For the average Joe there is no doubt the assault rifle will fire much faster and more accurately.
Of course, I’m talking about the modified rifle. Sure, the original Winchester existed–thirty years after the television show’s timeline–but that says nothing about the quick-fire version.
I wonder if such a modified rifle existed sometime in the 1890s.
Also, working a level-action rifle back and forth seems inherently less stable than pulling the trigger on a modern-day auto.
I had, as a child, a plastic Winchester cap rifle that possessed a tab that flipped out from the lever, which triggered the action just like the set-screw did on Connor’s gun. It looks like the modification was a common one at one time.
With its being shot from the hip, I would think any accuracy inherent in its being a rifle would be out the window. The link mentioned it used “handgun” style cartridges, so the power available with using a rifle wouldn’t be there. How was it any improvement on a handgun, or two handguns if one wanted 12 shots before reloading? Seems to me its length and bulk would be quite a drawback. What am I missing?
Well, this part is easy. You know how movies/TV are about portraying proper firearms handling technique. Y’know, pistols held sideways, M60s fired one-handed from the hip, etc.
OTOH old-time Wild West shows used to feature displays of amazing feats of accuracy and speed in drawing and firing, etc. with “western” weapons. But then again these were rehearsed and under controlled conditions.
The increased barrel length gave the cartridge greater muzzle velocity, accuracy and stopping power. The idea was to chamber both your rifle and your pistol to the same cartridge, so you didn’t have to carry different ammunition for each. The rifle provided accuracy, the pistol short-range firepower.
The Winchester 1892 was a popular rifle/carbine (depends on barrel length and stocks) in early movies and television shows. Winchester made a buttload of them, so they were easily obtainable. It seems to me that older shows were not overly-concerned with authenticity. I’ve seen a few Civil War pictures where people are running around with Colt 1873 ‘Peacemakers’.
I have a few Winchesters, including an 1892 Rifle made in 1897 in .32-20. In the same way that you can rapid-fire a Colt Peacemaker by holding the trigger down and ‘fanning’ the hammer, so you can rapid-fire a Winchester by holding the trigger down and working the lever. I’ve never tried it, so I don’t know if you have to work the lever fast enough to allow the following hammer enough force to ignite the primer, or if there is a disconnector. (I’m too lazy to pull out one of the Model 94s right now.)
From what I read years ago, Winchester did not make the ‘Lucas McCain’-style large loop carbine in the 1800s. They did make the Trapper model in the '80s, and possibly made it in the 50s. (I don’t remember.)
It’s really not unreasonable to use an 1892 as a stand-in for a more authentic rifle in a show set in the 1860s. Henry rifles were used occasionally in the Civil War. Winchester made the Henry and modified it into the 1866, which as you may surmise was brought out in 1866. The Henry looked pretty much like a Winchester, only they had brass receivers. The 1866 was similar, only it had a wooden fore-end. The 1873 came out in 1873 and had a steel receiver and other modifications. And then there were the models 1892 and 94. Most people are not going to noticel; and if they do, then it would be more like ‘Hey, they didn’t have lever-action guns [then and there]!’ Fortunately, Uberti and perhaps another Italian company or two are selling new Henrys, 1866s, 1873s and 1892s; so filmmakers can now easily obtain period-correct firearms.
Okay. But why the rapid-fire feature, which essentially throws away accuracy? How is using it that way better than using a pistol - or enough better to make up for its comparative unwieldiness?
Particularly since it was up against Steve McQueen’s “Wanted: Dead or Alive” sawed off quick firing rifle in the same TV season. (I have no idea who first got the idea or which show was rushed into production to steal the other’s thunder.)
Basically, since everyone knew that rapid fire weapons did not really exist in the Ol’ West, giving the hero a quick-firing weapon was simply a gimmick to lure in viewers (particularly among pre-teen and adolescent boys–and their not-quite-grown-up fathers).
If the OP is asking about the feasibility of using Lucas’ rifle in real-world combat, any firearm can be used for any purpose to which one might put a firearm. Obviously, some are better suited to a given task than others.
One could hunt quail with a .458 magnum, for example, but it would be much less suited to the task than a 20-gauge shotgun. Thus, someone could have used a gimmicked rifle like that in the TV show. With enough practice, a marksman could even become adept at hitting targets in succession quickly at close to moderate ranges. It wouldn’t be that radically different from firing a non-gimmicked rifle from the hip for that purpose.
What makes true autoloading weapons so fast in use, when properly used, is that the shooter needn’t remove his eye from the sights nor change hand positions on the weapon. A marksman who knows what s/he is doing doesn’t remove a bolt, lever, or pump gun from the shoulder either. The bolt is slowest and the pump is fastest of the three, all other things being equal in terms of rounds on target, because the bolt requires the most shifting of hands and the pump requires the least.
The gimmick in Lucas’ rifle, as has already been noted, was primarily to keep Chuck Connors from mashing his finger. When I was a teenager, I saw a friend crush his finger in an Ithaca .22 lever gun while trying to shoot like Lucas McCain. Eeeesh, what a bloody mess. If they had really wanted to have Lucas McCain be a rapid-fire marksman while using a historically accurate gun, they should have armed him with a Colt Lightning Rifle. It was available in a couple different frame sizes, various barrel lengths and finishes. It was extremely fast to fire because it lacked a disconnector. One could simply hold back the trigger and work the slide. (This “feature” BTW is also seen in a good many early pump shotguns.) Using a Lightning from the shoulder, McCain could have realistically fired just as fast and (in the real world) with more easily achieved accuracy. Whether the Lightning has as much kewl-factor as a gimmicked Winchester is a separate question.
IIRC, Lucas braces the rifle butt against his hip or thigh when doing the high-speed trick. That would cut down considerably on rifle movement due to the levering. Also, in the real world, highly skilled riflemen work the action (regardless of type) during recoil. That is a big factor in how fellows like the previously mentioned Sgt. Snoxall achieved such high rates of fire with manually-cycled weapons.
In any case, firing from the hip is a form of point shooting and is accurate at only comparatively short ranges. To use a fighting rifle up to its potential, it has to be properly aimed and fired and under most circumstances that means from the shoulder. A good rifleman levers and fires a Winchester 1892 from the shoulder, but I’m guessing the hip shooting is more telegenic and an easier position from which to do the speed-levering.
Oh, and in case I misunderstood your point about levering, the Lightning rifle was a pump action. You cycle it by sliding the forearm bit back and forth horizontally under the barrel.
Y’know, pistols held sideways, M60s fired one-handed from the hip, etc.
